Jury Misconduct Through Social Media

I’ve been following, with interest, opinions around the country dealing with the discoverability and admissibility of social media evidence and the issue of jury misconduct that involves the use of modern technology and social media. I found on John Day’s Twitter feed today an article that addresses the latter issue of juror misconduct. As John says, the article is written by two defense lawyers tripping over themselves to show potential insurance companies clients that drank the “plaintiffs must be stopped” Kool-Aid. But, it is a well written article and a really good collection of the case law on this topic.

In a footnote, the authors talk about a search they did on Twitter for “jury duty”:

On February 15, 2012, the authors of this article conducted a general Twitter search for “jury duty.” In the hour preceding the search, there were more than 170 tweets referencing jury duty on Twitter, including such comments as, “Someone, pls take a bat & beat me senseless with it. Why am I here yo!?! Jury duty is so cornyyyyyyyyyy,” “Anyone ever have to go for jury duty? Do they let you text and email etc from your phone while you wait? Any other helpful info,”and “Hes guilty…Jury Duty is honestly the biggest waste of time….”

There are so many grounds for a mistrial that are sitting out there ripe for the picking on social media, that no lawyer will ever see.

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